I’m a REI Co-op member, and I get rewards or discounts from time to time. If you have an REI near you, please sign up for $10, it’s the best thing you’ll ever do. In fact I think when you sign up you get a $10 coupon immediately, so it’s free. Anyway, sometimes I check out their app, and last week I stumbled upon a Mountsinsmith Lichen 2-P tent for $80, marked down from $219. For $80, I absolutely had to have it. I liked the vestibule it has, but I’ll talk about that in a bit. It packs up fairly small, standing on end it doesn’t even reach my knee. I’m not tall either.
Right off the bat, you can see it comes with very sturdy, high-quality stakes. I prefer these shepherd’s hook style, as opposed to any other kind. The tent does come with a ground mat. I do need to mention that they don’t provide enough stakes — if you want the two guy lines to be staked, you’ll need to bring a few extra.
Putting the rain fly on is easy enough, but you should secure it with the Velcro points before putting the rest of it in place, will make it easier later.
As a 2-Person tent, it’s basically a 1-Person tent, but that’s always the case with tents. Always subtract one from the size stated. Now let’s talk about the vestibule.
The photo online makes this vestibule look huge, but it’s not. That’s my full-sized camp chair there, and clearly I get no protection, but as far as storing gear and such, the vestibule area is great. Backpacks and other things will easily fit.
My two cents worth: This is a pretty well-made tent. It took me 23 minutes to pitch it, which is me doing it for the first time and not reading directions (I never do anyway). I’m sure next time I can cut a lot of time off. There are a lot of stake points, it should be stable in wind, it was for me and I live in Kansas, which is basically a wind tunnel.
Personally, I felt like it was kinda cramped, but I’m the weirdo who likes to sleep in 4-Person tents when I’m solo. I love space. I don’t like the tunnel-style tent that starts high and descends. But I’m just not used to that style.
I like this tent, I will be using it again. It’s just not a this-is-the-one tent. Getting this thing for $80 felt like a gift from the camping gods, for sure. Mountainsmith is a company from Colorado, yet the tent is made in China. That kinda disturbs me. Last but not least, I folded up this tent and packed it into its stuff sack at the campsite on a breezy morning. I felt pretty great about that. Some tents are way more difficult.
The Cheap Sleeping Pad Experiment continues. The rule is: try a new sleeping pad each camping trip, the pad needs to cost under $50 to qualify as “cheap.” This is my third one, and it’s the ZOOOBELIVES brand, purchased on Amazon. I believe it cost close to $40 but right now it’s even cheaper — $29.
Let me be very clear here — this thing is huge. It packs up the same size as a lot of tents do. I mean, Jesus. But I don’t care, when I go solo camping I’m not looking to save space. I bought this because it claims to be super thick — 4 inches. That’s enormous, most pads are half of that thickness at best.
There are two valves. The main one shown in the second photo, and then this valve for the built-in foot pump. Let me give you some expert advice: the foot pump is a joke. It does work, I think, but it takes an extremely long time. In fact I gave up after a few minutes because I felt like it was it really getting there. So I used the main nozzle and aired it up in 30 seconds with my GIGA Pump.
Final opinion? This thing is fucking awesome. It’s as thick as advertised, it kept air all night long, and I damn near thought I was sleeping on a bed. I can’t testify to the warmth, it got down to 50 degrees at night but I was snug as a bug with my usual assortment of blankets. I always put a blanket under my air pads and one on top so I’m not sleeping directly on the cold synthetic material. I honestly don’t want to try another pad after this one, I love it, but I also can’t wait to keep trying more. Again — do not buy this if you are a hiker, it’s simply enormous and heavy. Car camping, absolutely.
$40 on Amazon. It comes in a stuff sack that doubles as an air pump, like a lot of the “good” air pads do.
The stuff sack plugs into the sleep pad, and you open it, close it, and roll it up to force the air into the pad. Pretty awesome. I know this is a common thing amongst backpackers who know their sleeping pads, but it was my first go round, and I enjoyed the experience.
Bottom line — The sleeping pad was awesome. Stayed aired up all night, the material feels pretty solid, and the pad was as thick as any pad I’ve ever used. Love the camo color — badass. Down side? It’s not as small as other pads stowed away (Ascend) but it’s still worth it. I like this pad a lot, the Sleepingo felt a bit better, but cheaper. I’ll construct a top 10 list by the time I’m done with this experiment.
I have a bit of a rant, a bone to pick with the sleeping pad industry. For starters, a good sleeping pad is one of those game-changers for camping. There’s nothing worse than sleeping on the hard ground, and nothing better than sleeping on a good, comfortable sleeping pad. However, the prices for these things are astronomical. $200, $300 for some of the more popular ones! My first sleeping pad cost $60 — it’s the Ascend brand from Cabela’s. Of course I have a family of 5, so that puts me $300 in to cover the family. I can’t imagine paying $1,000 for sleeping pads. So here’s my complaint: can you assure me that your $300 sleeping pad won’t spring a leak? Because all sleeping pads have the potential to get poked by a stick or sharp rock, these things aren’t bulletproof. Therefore I refuse to pay buckets of cash for one of these things.
As it stands, I have 3 Ascend pads that won’t hold air. One of them I even patched up and it still leaks. So here’s what I’ve decided to do, I’ll call it The Great Sleeping Pad Experiment. What I’ve done is found countless numbers of cheap sleeping pads on Amazon. Most of these are in the $40 range, some are even as low as $25. I’ve decided that I’m going to buy a different one for probably my next 5 or 6 trips. Most, if not all, are brands of companies I’ve never heard of. So without further ado, here’s sleeping pad #1: Sleepingo
This pad cost $25 on Amazon and comes in one of three colors, I chose green obviously. I aired it up with my Giga pump, but when it came time to close the nozzle (pictured below) the thing just wouldn’t latch, so I had to keep re-airing it up until I finally got it to stay.
The air pad was extremely comfortable. I actually think it felt better than my Ascend pads. It stayed aired up all night, no issues. It was also a lot easier to pack up compared to the Ascend pads. The only problem with my grand experiment is that I’ll not be getting a very accurate idea of how durable these cheap pads are, if I only use them one night and move on to a different one. Regardless, the Sleepingo passed the comfort test and you’re unlikely to find a cheaper sleeping pad anywhere.
In camping terms, 2023 was pretty stable with a trifecta of highlights — I camped in Arkansas for the first time, I caught a ton of huge catfish in my favorite Kansas lake, and I went solo camping with my new Weimaraner in Colorado. Otherwise, it was pretty low key journeys to my usual place. My blog posts here have become predictable in form, to which I apologize: Photo of MLB baseball hat, some words about road trip music; photo of tent setup; a predictable camp meal; some photos of the fish I caught; campfire photo; morning coffee photo …. You get it. I’ll try to do less of those posts next year (yeah, right). Here is what I have decided that I will focus on in The Year Our Lord 2024:
A. Camping Gear Reviews
One of my favorite things to do in all of Life is to get out to the campsite and try new camping gear. The general knowledge is that you are supposed to test it out at home so you don’t get any surprises out in Nature, but I say fuck that, live for the moment. This came to fruition last spring when I camped in my cheap-Chinese-garbage Hewolf tent. It rained and I woke up freezing in wet clothes and wet sleeping bag and blankets. Now obviously I’m not suggesting this is some cool macho thing to do, people can get hypothermia and such. I’m sorry though, I’m not going to set up a new tent in my backyard before a rain storm comes just to test it. I love the unpredictability of using new gear in the wild, and outside of a cold rain storm on a bad tent, nothing that fails is going to ruin my life.
But as far as gear goes, I’m going to focus on what I can afford, which will tilt toward budget-friendly items. The camping gear universe is full of $200 sleeping pads and $700 tents — I’m sorry but I’ll never do that. I also don’t want to purposely use a bunch of cheap crap that sucks. If I can find affordable products with good reviews, I’ll give that a go. I love trying out new gear, so I want to add that to my posts in 2024.
B. New Colorado Views
I already have some ideas for my annual Colorado journey. I have an alpine lake with a sunrise view in mind, and some exploring.
I also have an itch for the Ozarks. I don’t think we’ll go back this year, but there’s something about Arkansas that I love.
C. Try One New Kansas Experience
It may be a new state park, I have one in mind, or it may be renting a cabin at a state park and God-forbid try “glamping” for a weekend. I told my wife this morning we should try it, but it almost has to be on a deplorable weather weekend, otherwise I’d want to be in a tent. We shall see. Seems like a good change of pace though, and I think the whole family would enjoy it.
D. Build The 4Runner
I won’t make it a point of discussion on my posts, but I have grand desires for my 4Runner. Roof rack, ladder, rock sliders, off-road tires .. I plan on owning this beast until I die. God willing.
Happy New Year and thanks for reading this if you do, I swear I’ll try to improve.
Normally I wouldn’t make much of a deal about camping in mid-to-late December, it’s just the last camping trip of the year, nothing special. But over the last few years, I’ve put more of my own touches on it, and it’s turned into my own ridiculous pseudo-pagan-festive-camping blowout. Since I’m on vacation this week, I was able to do a few cool things: One, arrive at the campsite on a Sunday afternoon. This was awesome as it gave me all of Saturday to slowly prepare and pack. Two, I was able to pull a two-nighter. With two days of abundant, sacred sunshine and crystal blue skies, here’s how it played out:
A few weeks ago, I dug up an oddly likable rap album by Nas that I listened to when I was young, confused. It’s still a guilty pleasure but this trip found me back into my current frame of mind, thank God. Merle and Waylon. I also listened to Gordon Lightfoot, so my musical tastes were firing on all cylinders.
I arrived around 2:30 p.m. to a desolate, empty campground as expected. I only had a few hours to get camp set before sunset, so I got straight to work pitching my Kelty Rumpus 4 — the same tent I took to Colorado in July. It’s basically just like my Coleman Skydome, only bigger and better quality. The vestibule is massive and kept me out of the wind. After camp was set, I threw out a couple of cat lines, and waited for them to bite. It was the perfect time to start the December camping celebration, so I tapped the mini-keg of Shiner Cheer:
There aren’t many weirdos that will bring a 5-Liter keg with matching glassware on a camping trip, but this trip was, as I’ll keep saying, a celebration. And for the record, the Shiner Cheer was delightful. Ale brewed with peaches and pecans, I will have to get more for Christmas Eve in a few days. I used small limestone rocks as my runes to keep track of the number of beers poured forth from the Cheer. I collected a lot of wood, and then went down to check on my fishing work:
I never thought in a million years I’d be catching fish from the shore in December, but that’s how the year started on March 4, and that’s how it will end.
With The Ghost Of Old Turtle watching over me, I got a good campfire going and got cozy. I eventually headed down to shore to pull in the lines.
One more, and almost — almost — the mark of the beast. I already caught a 6.66 pound earlier this year, I don’t know how I’d feel if I caught another one. That’s all the fish I’d catch this trip — Monday was cold AF with a northerly wind sweeping over the lake. It was yet another two-cat trip, the seventh time it’s happened this year.
Monday morning … I slept in until 7:20 a.m. which is LATE for me. I made coffee inside the vestibule with plenty of room, and thank God. The north wind was blowing straight at my tent. I purposely faced the tent to the north because the wind was gonna be from the south on Tuesday morning, and I’d rather be more comfortable then.
I donned the Arizona hat and drove to a local gas station to buy gloves — I forgot my Gortex-insulated leather gloves and my hands were frozen. I drove to a once-favored fishing spot on the river, but it was bitterly cold. I didn’t stay long. I drove back to camp but during my journey exercised the 4WD like you’re supposed to do 10 miles a month. Also on my way back, one of the biggest coyotes I’ve ever seen ran across the road. A beautiful beast. A good omen, I always think. I got back to camp and really had time to kill, so I collected a shit-ton of firewood, and also found my yearly Yule Log to burn in the sacred Last Campfire Of The Year.
It was cute — it had a hole in it from a woodpecker I’d imagine. It wasn’t the best Yule Log ever, but it burned completely, it didn’t even take that long.
I’m skipping over lunchtime, because that will be a separate post — I made something completely audacious— chicken fried steak! It turned out good, but I’ll write about that experiment later. The jingle bell bottle opener actually jingles. I figure it’s good to have on me if I ever go camping in bear country, the authorities will be able to hear where my corpse is being dragged into the bush if a bear or cougar get to me.
Tuesday morning was 28 degrees Fahrenheit. My leftover water in my kettle was iced. The wind was calm, from the south but it was not cozy outside at all, but in my tent, yes it was good. My Kelty 20 degree down bag kept me snug.
I slowly made coffee, read some, and gradually packed up. I used to hate packing up but it’s become sort of calming and enjoyable to me. I drink lots of good coffee and just take my time, and there’s the joy of getting to the comforts of home all the while reliving the moments of the trip while I’m packing up. I don’t know, it’s a good feeling. Not quite as good as just arriving at the campsite, however. Just different. Last but not least, I could not pack up my tent at the campsite. It was too windy:
The vestibule/rain fly was enormous! I simply folded it up, the tent as well, and did the Lazy Packup:
I got home and packed it up properly. Sometimes you just gotta do whatever works best. The throw-it-in-and-go only works on solo trips, obviously.
Overall, a good trip. I have a few new gear reviews to do, because that’s also one of my traditions on my last campout, try out new gear. I’ll be posting more this week for sure, whether that’s good or bad, I don’t know. The last campfire has burnt out in 2023. Next camping trip is scheduled for Late February 2024, Lord willing.
The Lantern of Oz 